WODdoc Episode 379 P365: Squat Therapy; Hips Or Ankles?

July 17, 2015 12:05 am

Last nights episode exposed one of the commonly seen squat problems, but I didn’t tell you how to fix it. Why?…. because how do you know what to fix? Spending time fixing things that aren’t broken seems ill advised.

To stay balanced while squatting the center of mass needs to be somewhere between the front of our ankles and where our toes start. We’ll call this the magic space. Picture the space that the tongue of your shoe takes up…. that’s where I am talking about. If we were to divid the squat in halve splitting front from back, naturally we hold more weight posteriorly (all that junk in the trunk). Hence the reason there is inevitably some forward tilt in your torso. When our hips hang back too far we gather too much weight posteriorly and have to fold forward to stop from toppling backwards.

Why though?… well it normally comes down to immobility in either our hips or ankles….. but which one?

A simple way to figure it out is to isolate the hip and ankle ranges of motion in a function squat position. That is exactly what I was demonstrating today. By hanging our torso back we keep our hips open (relatively) and can concentrate on ankle range. If we are able to drive our knees over or past our toes without our heels rising ankle mobility is not the likely culprit. The next step is to drag our torso upright essentially closing the hip angle. If this causes our heels to rise I would explore hip mobility first.

Today’s WODdocket:

Try out today’s experiment and find out where your limitation is coming from…